


The Odd Uneven Time

by yikesola



Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: 2009, M/M, Mild Sexual Content, Skype, long distance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-03
Updated: 2019-02-19
Packaged: 2019-10-21 17:38:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 20,816
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17646953
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yikesola/pseuds/yikesola
Summary: Phil fancies a boy on the opposite end of the country, four years younger than him, with a girlfriend. Lovely. This is gonna end so well.A fic about 2009 and inching closer.





	1. Chapter 1

It’s late June when Phil bites the bullet and decides to send Dan a Facebook friend request. It’s weird, the subtle shift that doing so makes in terms of how Phil categorises Dan in his mind. He’s no longer an enthusiastic commenter under the username danisnotonfire, he’s a profile under the name Daniel Howell. 

A real person. 

A really, really hot person. 

Shit— Phil hadn’t had much to infer from the Twitter icon or the YouTube channel that didn’t have a single video, but now that he’s combing through Dan’s Facebook photos he’s confronted with the realisation that he likes what he sees. 

“You have a type, Lester,” he says to himself, mumbled as he goes to bite his lip without really thinking about the gesture. 

He notices among the selfies and the group photos that there are quite a few pictures with Dan next to a particularly pretty face— a girl who Dan often has his arm around, with a pointed chin and long dark hair and sparkling eyes and who doesn’t quite come up to his shoulder. A girl who is tagged in each photo as _Alice Tilden_. 

Phil clicks back to the front of Dan’s profile and sees her name again, right after “ _Daniel Howell is in a relationship with…_ ” and he wonders for a second why he didn’t think to look at that column before diving headfirst into the photos. 

He’s trying to name the emotion that this new information makes him feel. It’s not disappointment. Nope. Definitely not disappointment. 

What does he have to be disappointed about? Sure, Dan hadn’t mentioned a girlfriend, but when would that have come up organically in any of the conversations they’ve had so far? “Hey, I really enjoyed your ‘Space Adventure’ videos, oh and also I have a girlfriend,” or “Hey, you like Muse, I like Muse, oh and also I have a girlfriend.” Yeah, that’s not needlessly clunky or anything. 

It’s not Dan’s fault that Phil mistook the guy’s enthusiasm for more than it is. 

He just wants a mate. He just wants some editing tips. He just wants some attention from Phil because he’s got a mildly surprising amount of YouTube subscribers, and that’s why Dan’s been blowing up Phil’s notifications for weeks. 

Phil wonders if that should matter; the confirmation that Dan hasn’t been flirting with him but just genuinely enthusiastic. He wonders if the idea of Dan having a girlfriend should be anything other than a fact to file away, like the fact that he also knows now that Dan has dimples and a rather perfect cupid’s bow. 

Nothing to be upset over or invested in. 

Just a fact about a fan. A fan who might slowly turn into a friend if they keep chatting as often as they have been. 

He wonders if the sense of… something? He’s not gonna admit to _missed opportunity_ but, sure, he wonders if the sense of a missed opportunity at the news that Dan has a seemingly lovely girlfriend is just a result of him feeling really fucking lonely. 

Because he has, lately. He _has_ felt really fucking lonely. 

He can feel his friends around him already over the whole uni experience, ready to move on to the next stage in their lives. And the very idea terrifies Phil. He isn’t ready to leave. Hell, that’s why he stayed around for the master’s degree, so he wouldn’t have to leave just yet. 

And now, this time of his life is almost up. This era is almost done with. The great foggy future is approaching faster than he’d like it to. Questions of what he wants his life to look like, where he wants it to be based, who he wants around for it— they’re swarming him. 

He’s choking on them. 

And everyone around him seems to either already know, or be perfectly comfortable not knowing. He wishes he could be fine not knowing. But the not knowing is terrifying him. It’s making him feel cut off from everyone else around him. And he’s finding himself alone more often than not. 

So when someone came at him with such enthusiasm, someone who he can admit after looking through his Facebook photos is freaking hot, of course he latched onto the idea of not being so goddamn lonely before he could even realise he was feeling it. 

Phil’s jolted from these thoughts by a message alert. Dan sent him, “ _hi XD shit i cant believe im friends w amazingphil or facebook friends at least_ ” 

He figures he has this moment to put into words the epiphany he’d had about slowly getting to know Dan Howell better, not danisnotonfire. It goes both ways, after all. Dan is getting to know him better; AmazingPhil is starting to take a backseat. 

“ _lol you’re facebook friends w Phil Lester *o* very different, very official! Other social medias get AmazingPhil but here it’s just Phil :)_ ” 

“ _the internet is weird that way like i feel like i know you better than loads of my irl friends ^-^ if that isn’t the creepiest thing i could possibly say ‘:-|_ ”

“ _Not very creepy... It’s probably a good idea for me to know who my stalkers are anyways! :3 lol jk_ ” 

“ _}:-)_ ”

Phil wonders if he should mention the girlfriend. He wonders if he should mention anything about how far he dug through Dan’s photos. Tell a stupid joke about how he’s giving Dan a run for his money in the stalker department because he spent so long staring at them and liking what he saw and biting his fucking lip… 

But suddenly Phil doesn’t want to make a joke like that. He doesn’t want to feel like he’s leering over Dan, being a sleazy older dude on the internet that’s willing to use his tiny bit of clout to creep on him. 

There’s a twist in his gut at the thought. 

Dan’s hot, sure, but he’s young and he has a girlfriend, and he’s all the way down south near Reading. It’s not worth getting worked up over. 

“ _I guess now that we’re facebook friends tho the mystery & intrigue’s lifted … I’m not weird AmazingPhil anymore, I’m just the guy w too many pics of my old hair and status updates about animal facts_” 

“ _my plan is working :] ive been spamming your socials to get access to those sweet sweet animal facts all along lay one on me phil_ ” 

“ _did you know that an elephant’s tusk is made out of the same material as human hair?_ ” 

“ _… are you sure O_o_ ”

“ _I may be remembering that wrong lol maybe it was a rhino horn??_ ” 

“ _yeah pretty sure elephant tusks are ivory mate lol thats why humans keep poaching them_ ” 

“ _k def rhinos then! ^-^_ ” 

The twist in his gut has untangled. He’s not creeping on Dan— they’re mates. They get along. He feels less fucking lonely as they keep on bantering. 

*

The first time Dan gets off to the thought of Phil Lester, it is entirely by accident. Honestly— just like all the other times he’s been in the middle of a wank and the image of a broad chest or a stubbled jaw appears unprompted in his mind. 

It’s not that he hasn’t long ago come to terms with the fact that men are hot. He has; Brendon Urie and Boone on _Lost_ and Greg who lives down the street and sometimes jogs by in the early morning, they each helped to clear that up for him. 

Whether or not he’ll ever act on this knowledge is another matter. That’s a problem for future-Dan.

Right now he’s got Alice. He’s happy with Alice; he doesn’t need to bother with how hot other girls or guys are. 

It’s like a weird loyalty thing for him. He’s got a girlfriend; he tries to do her the courtesy of at least wanking to the thought of her and her alone. 

But he’s eighteen, he wanks a whole hell of a lot, and the images that pop up can be rather unprompted. He feels some needless guilt over it afterwards; it’s not like anyone would ever know. It’s not even like Alice would really be bothered if for some ungodly reason he told her about his masturbation habits. But still, he’s good at making himself feel guilty even when he knows it’s needless. 

He’s good at soaking in that guilt afterwards like it’s something he deserves to feel. 

So when he’s got a hand down his pants late one August night, after a day of nothing but shuffling through different social medias and a thorough re-watching of AmazingPhil’s “Sea Badger” video because he wanted to laugh at the joke Phil makes about the supposed American uses for pepper, he’s surprised when his vague thoughts of Alice’s fingernails digging into his shoulders are interrupted. 

Interrupted by the intense blueness of Phil’s eyes in the Florida sunshine that had flooded the room he’d filmed in. 

Interrupted by the shot of Phil with his shirt pulled up and his shorts unzipped, pulling his pants down just low enough to show the camera the line of his sunburn. 

Interrupted by the thought of trailing his tongue along that line, starting at Phil’s hipbone, ending somewhere Phil didn’t show the camera— 

He’s coming before he has time to even process these interruptions. When he’s finished and catching his breath, there’s a heaviness in his gut that he knows he ought to address. But he’s always been good at procrastination. He reaches down for a discarded shirt on his bedroom floor and wipes his hand clean. 

He checks his phone to see a goodnight text from Alice and sends her “ _< 3_” in return. She’d sent hers a good few hours before. Dan’s gotten worse about promptly replying to her lately. She’s definitely asleep by now. She’s not going to see his answer or send back one of her own until morning. The silence of the night is ringing in his ears as everyone else in his house is asleep and their quiet street seems isolated from the entire world. 

He’s alone with his thoughts. 

A bleak chunk of time later, his phone lights up beside him. He’s surprised— surely Alice hasn’t gotten back to him already? And she hasn’t. The alert isn’t a text from her at all. It’s a Twitter DM from Phil. 

Despite the silence hanging heavy around him, Dan audibly gasps when he sees that. Something of his melancholy haze shatters at the sound. 

“ _went to a foam party and it was officially the worst thing I’ve ever experienced :-|| I’m soaking wet & sticky, and it’s not at all in the fun way! ;-} _”

Dan reads that message eighty times and genuinely considers pretending he’s asleep because he can’t imagine how he could respond to that in any way that doesn’t make Phil think he’s a perv or an idiot or both at the same time. 

Eventually he drums up a passable response, “ _O_o describe the layers of wet and sticky pls so i can properly empathise_ ” 

Phil messages him back with, “ _starting from the centre… 1)bones, 2)muscles, 3)skin, 4)my sweat, 5)the sweat of other club people, 6)the horrible foam juice they sprayed everywhere, 7)all the drinks that were spilt on me, 8)more sweat, 9)more horrible foam juice, 10)tears… not mine, of course, but…tears! 11)mystery liquid, possibly vomit but I’m afraid to confirm it_ ”

“ _how will u ever feel clean again D:_ ”

“ _I won’t! :o I’ll just be filthy forever… I’ve had 2 showers and still feel like I have at least half those layers on me_ ” 

“ _tbh im sitting in those first 4 layers_ ” Dan sends. “ _it’s not so bad XD you just need to clean off the other 7_ ”

Dan thinks the time it takes Phil’s next message to arrive is unfairly long considering how short it ends up being, but it still knocks the wind out of him. “ _Been working up a sweat, Howell? :3_ ”

He could keep flirting. He wants to keep flirting. But that lingering guilt is still bogging him down. 

“ _maaayyybbeee :P more fun than a foam party i bet_ ” he sends. “ _how’d u get dragged out there_ ” 

“ _I’m still not sure *w* I’m too nice to say no_ ”

Dan reads that and thinks Phil’s too nice for a lot of things. Too nice to tell an overeager fan to fuck off, too nice to know that fan had been fantasising about his tan line earlier, too nice for Dan to resist even if he feels awful for it whenever he gets the chance to stop and think.


	2. Chapter 2

Phil supposes that actively having to remind himself to enjoy this moment isn’t a good sign. That it’s a sign that he needs to stop and sort out what’s bothering him, or something. Instead of what he does do, since he really _does_ want to be enjoying this moment despite his crowded brain, and actively remind himself how this is something he should just be able to enjoy.

It should be simple, and physical, and effortless, this hook-up. Right? Possibly one of his last uni hook-ups before he’s back home and, for all intents and purposes, back in the closet.

It isn’t really as finite as that, though.

He’s not going to be shoved so far in the closet he’ll have to pretend he isn’t _himself_ at least.

His parents aren’t malicious the way some parents are, they’re just … unobservant? In the way that’s rooted entirely in their traditional mindset. He’ll tell them whatever he needs to tell them someday— that he’s bi, that he’s queer, that he’s not-straight— he really isn’t too keen on the particularities of labels. He’ll tell them someday; they’ll need him to tell them. They won’t pick it up on their own.

And he figures they’ll be fine, eventually. Maybe a little shocked, maybe a little hesitant.

A dark corner of his mind suggests they might be a little angry or disgusted. It’s only a small dark corner, but enough to terrify him.

It’s why he never tried showing his parents _The Mark of Oxin_ , because of a throwaway bit where the boy character has a threesome with an angel and her boyfriend (he was fourteen… he had felt bold and assured at the time, putting something like that in). It’s why when his brother asked him who he was texting so much during a visit home, back when he and Charlie were still somewhere hazy, still _potentials_ and _maybes_ and _almosts_ , he’d answered, “No one. A mate.”

He thinks he has enough confidence in their love and support to know it’s something they’ll eventually be neutral towards at worst. And hell, eventually supportive towards at best. It’s the fact that he has to worry about it at all that aggravates him.

So he hasn’t told them.

And he’ll tell them someday, when he has something worth telling them.

But they don’t need to know about his uni escapades. They don’t need to know about the drunken make outs or the handful of one night stands or that weirdly rushed club bathroom blowjob… they’re his parents for fuck’s sake! They don’t even need to know about the online flirtation and that one spark which might’ve become something bigger if the timing hadn’t been off. Most of those moments were with guys, a few of the quicker ones with girls, and they were all over before he had time to even pine after them or before they had time to turn into something _real_ , so he isn’t exactly going to send his parents a detailed list.

He’s just going to bide his time, wait until he’s someone’s someone. Then he won’t be telling them about his sexuality, he’ll be telling them about how someone makes him feel.

That’s probably the best way to do it, he figures.

That’s how he’ll get through the annoyingly performative sit-down with any of his sanity left.

And it allows him to put it off for now, because he’s certainly not someone’s someone at this time. The closest he comes to in this moment is being Trevor’s someone for the night, shoved against his bedroom door with a bruise being sucked onto his collarbone and nails digging into the flesh of his hips.

“Fuck,” Trevor groans, grinding their hips together. Phil groans out some kind of attempted eager response. He’s only half-hard but Trevor seems to think it is good enough or doesn’t actually seem to notice because he’s practically panting into Phil’s neck.

Phil wants to be into it. He _is_ into it… it feels good and he knows what Trevor’s into and he’s had a brutal bout of exams lately, so the release is gonna be just what he needs.

Only, he can’t stop breaking things down in to blocks of time: a few months before he’s back home, a few weeks before he says goodbye to some people forever, a few days before the heat of summer spikes unbearably, a few hours before he’s sure to feel smothered by Trevor’s continued presence in his bedroom, a few minutes before Trevor is sure to notice something’s off if he doesn’t get his fucking act together and let himself enjoy things.

“How do you want it?” he asks, resolving to be into it. To enjoy this moment and any other physically intimate moment he can soak in before his hometown-mandated dry spell.

“Wanna suck you off,” is Trevor’s answer, his hand already reaching for the button of Phil’s jeans.

“Yeah,” Phil says, a little out of relief and more so in agreement. That he can do, that he can be into and also not have to pay any sort of attention for. Perfect for the muddled mess that is his brain lately.

Afterwards, after Phil had well and truly gotten into it by the perfect distraction of Trevor’s passably-talented tongue and rallied enough enthusiasm to have a proper fuck and fall together onto his bed to recover, Phil finds himself buzzing with energy and unable to drift into a post-orgasm hazy sleep like Trevor is. He’s just lying flat on his back, looking at his ceiling, and trying to convince himself to enjoy this moment too. Enjoy this like he managed to enjoy the previous one.

His phone lights up with a text. It’s from Dan and reads, “ _im a terrible person who caved and broke my own no trailers rule in a moment of weakness and mate the trailer for avatar is bloody amazing now i cant sleep because i want to see it so bad and also i mean i usually cant sleep in general but this isnt helping D: D:_ ”

Phil types a reply, hoping the brightness of his phone screen doesn’t bother Trevor. Then on second thought, he hopes it does, hopes it drives Trevor back into his own room because he really wants his bed to himself now but just isn’t callous enough to kick the guy out.

“ _I can’t sleep either_ ,” he sends back, “ _Tell me about the trailer :3 but don’t spoil anything, I’ve proven to have more willpower than you, Howell!_ ”

“ _epicness phil its pure epicness_ ”

He wonders why Dan isn’t texting his girlfriend if he can’t sleep. That’s a thing someone who has a girlfriend does, right? Text them when they can’t sleep, when they want to talk about a movie they’re excited about, maybe send something dirty in the hopes that messing around will make them tired enough to sleep.

But Dan’s texting him instead.

Dan told him briefly about the girlfriend shortly after they started talking more about life things and less about just internet stuff. Phil knows that Alice is nice and smart (smarter than Dan, he insisted) and can’t cook worth a damn but can drink Dan under the table (mostly because he’s a lightweight).

That’s pretty much all Phil knows about her. That’s pretty much the only time Dan has really spoken about her.

Maybe, Phil muses, she doesn’t have their horrendous sleep schedule. Maybe she’d just sleep through any texts Dan sent, whereas Phil is guaranteed to answer.

“ _Is it worth building a time machine to get us to the premiere date_ ,” he texts Dan, “ _because the wait is killing me? D= And do you think we could actually get it built in time or would it take so long that the film is released before we even finish it? *w*_ ”

He notices he isn’t having to actively convince himself to enjoy the moment anymore. This moment, messaging Dan in the middle of the night about nonsense they’re both stupidly passionate about, he’ll probably always enjoy that without convincing. Even Trevor sleeping behind his turned back doesn’t matter anymore.

Nothing matters but the warm feeling in his chest when Dan says next, “ _either way its better than waiting around like this lets start tomorrow :3_ ”

He enjoys the warm feeling so much that he isn’t going to worry right now about what in the world it could mean. He’s just gonna let it warm him through and through.

*

Dan’s sad. Or, at least, he’d say he was sad if anyone asked— not that they would, no one ever does— but it isn’t exactly accurate. He’s feeling… heavy.

Everything feels heavy.

His limbs and his eyelids and the air in his bedroom. And he’s been feeling like this for a few days now. He hopes it’ll start to wear off soon.

He feels like this every once in a while, has for as long as he can really remember. Since he stopped feeling like a kid. He feels like no one actually likes him, and that’s fine because he feels like he doesn’t actually like anyone either. He feels tired, every part of him tired down to his cells, but he can’t sleep well and he just stays tired for days until he crashes and sleeps for 15 solid hours. There are just some days sometimes where he sits in his room without bothering to turn the light on, only getting up to wee or sneak dry cereal at 2 am, and otherwise not getting out of bed.

He doesn’t want to see anyone. The idea of seeing his friends or Alice or his family on these days is fucking unbearable.

But so is the idea of being alone. It’s a weird contradiction, but being alone on these days feels raw and exposed, like when he’s ripped the skin off a blister and the cold air on the pus-soaked layer of tender new skin is too much.

So he opens his laptop and plays every Paperlilies and AmazingPhil and Smosh video available on YouTube with the brightness down and the volume up, and it’s almost as good as not being alone. He’s not alone, with those videos going, _and_ he doesn’t have to suffer through having someone around.

Hell of a compromise. And all that he has the capacity for today, honestly.

Alice hasn’t gotten the memo, unfortunately. She’s ringing for the third time since that morning.

It’s about four in the afternoon and Dan hasn’t left his bed, not even to wee because he hasn’t bothered to drink enough water so that isn’t a prodding issue. He hasn’t done so on purpose. It just happens that way on these days.

Maybe he should be grateful that Alice cares enough to ring. But things have been off between them lately. Have been for a while.

He doesn’t usually like to admit it, but on days like this he doesn’t have the energy to lie to himself. Things have been off and neither of them seems to have the energy or the interest to set them right again. So they just keep going on these crooked rails.

He doesn’t ever see her— doesn’t see anyone really, but she’s his girlfriend and he’s supposed to make it a point to see her isn’t he?— and she rings all the time and he forgets to answer her texts for hours. She’s busy with her work experience, she’s busy getting ready for uni. And he’s busy doing nothing at all, busy procrastinating his life away between these days where he feels so fucking heavy and days where he’s nothing but anxious energy that he manages to syphon off through _DDR_ or _Halo_.

If either one of them were both more decisive people, they’d probably have ended things already. But they’re both chronic procrastinators. It’s a wonder they ever managed to get together in the first place.

And now it’s been so long that the effort of actually ending things, well, it’s something they’re both willing to keep pushing aside. Because it’ll be hard, because in some way or another they very much still love each other, because it’s so fucking easy to procrastinate and do nothing at all.

He’s procrastinating ending things with Alice. He’s procrastinating making any decisions related to uni or what the fuck he intends to do with his gap year.

He’s procrastinating untangling the very tangled feelings he has thick in his throat when Phil smiles so wide and sticks his tongue out the side of his teeth, or posts a joke on Twitter or in the caption of a DailyBooth he can almost convince himself Phil typed out just for him, or takes his shirt off after they’ve been Skyping for a few hours because the late summer night is hot and he never sleeps with one anyway.

He’s procrastinating everything in his life that could possibly matter, instead wasting impossible amounts of time playing _DDR_ or _Halo_ or sleeping past noon.

He’s good at so few things, but he’s very good at playing _DDR_ or _Halo_ and sleeping past noon and procrastinating until everything in his life implodes. So he figures he’ll stick with what he knows.

A few hours later he looks up through the gap in his curtains and sees that the sun is rising.

His eyes are burning but he can never sleep well on these days when he feels so heavy. He wants to sleep. His very bones are begging him to sleep. But he can’t.

He pauses the AmazingPhil video playing on his laptop and checks his phone for the first time in hours. There’re plenty of missed calls from Alice, but she’s spared him a voicemail. There are two day-old text messages. There’s a text from his mate Brian, just a photo of a wine bottle with a funny label, no other message along with it. There’s a notification for Phil’s Twitter and DailyBooth and Facebook that he wants to catch up on… just, not right now.

He burrows under his duvet and pushes his unwashed fringe out of his eyes and opens up Facebook to message Phil an abrupt and unelaborated, “ _sad :( make me laugh pls_ ”

He’s not going to think about why he’s messaging Phil and not Alice. He doesn’t have the fucking energy, he doesn’t have enough space in his brain to untangle that mess right now. On days when he isn’t so heavy, something like why he’d rather message Phil over Alice seems like a small enough thing not to bother worrying about. And on heavy days it’s too thorny and complicated to even consider.

So he procrastinates it as well, along with everything else. It’s pushed into a dust pile and he’ll address it… someday? Sometime. Eventually.

Phil’s asleep, because the sun is barely up and he isn’t fucking broken like Dan is. But a few hours later he does send a reply that Dan figures is well worth the wait. “ _aw sorry :’{ try this: How do you get a baby alien to sleep? … You rocket! =D_ ”

Dan sends back “ _thx ^-^_ ”

And Phil asks, “ _Did it work? Less sad?_ ”

“ _worked enough_ ” Dan says, and it isn’t entirely a lie.

“ _Make sure you drink some water or something. We could skype later if you want! *v* but I really need a coffee and a shower first before I’m ready to be a person_ ”

Dan’s still in that hazy middle ground of not wanting to see anyone but also not wanting to be alone. Maybe Skype will be the same kind of loophole that watching videos is, he thinks. Maybe it’ll be even better because it’ll be Phil as opposed to AmazingPhil and he’ll talk for longer than three minutes and he’ll be talking only to Dan. And maybe he’ll feel less heavy if he sees Phil smile, if he hears him laugh. “ _sure XD_ ” he says, “ _later tho i need a shower too and maybe a nap_ ”

“ _lol it’s 10 am Dan!_ ”

“ _yeah exactly :P nap time_ ”

He has his nap, actually manages one, after two glasses of water that he drinks too quickly and it ends up making his stomach ache a little bit, but fuck did it feel good to drink something. Alice calls again while he’s in the shower and he sends her a text message before logging into Skype saying “ _sorry not been feeling well :/ you off work tomorrow? miss you <3_”

She texts back, “ _nope, working. Sorry to hear you’re poorly babe :((( miss you too <3 get some rest._”

He figures he should’ve just texted her a few days ago when he started feeling heavy. Then she would’ve known to leave him alone and he wouldn’t have had the guilt of ignoring her to deal with.

But now at least he’s bought himself a few days where she won’t be constantly ringing and therefore constantly reminding him what a shit boyfriend he is just because he’s procrastinating getting any element of his life together. Phil’s icon pops online and the familiar Skype ringtone fills his otherwise silent room.


	3. Chapter 3

Phil knows he’s well and truly fucked when he finds Dan’s DailyBooth. He managed to lie to himself well enough after adding Dan on Facebook and exchanging many, many DMs on Twitter, texting all hours of the day and having countless conversations on Skype, but there’s no use any longer— Dan’s hot, he likes Phil’s videos, he’s funny and brilliant and they share a lot of interests, and he’s so fucking hot.

Phil fancies him.

Phil fancies a boy on the opposite end of the country, four years younger than him, with a girlfriend. Lovely. This is gonna end so well.

But that’s a problem for future-Phil, he figures. Present-Phil has other concerns, like commenting on the photo of Dan in front of Gucci with his fringe and his earrings and his lips parted ever so slightly. Phil writes, “ _stop being so damn pretty dan howell_ ” more for his own benefit than anyone else’s. Yeah, if Dan could stop being so damn pretty it’d be an awful big help; if Dan could stop being so damn pretty this whole thing might fizzle out before it eats Phil alive.

It doesn’t actually make sense, he thinks as he pushes his laptop away before he’s tempted to add any other inane comments.

It may be September now, but nothing’s really changed since Phil added Dan on Facebook back in June. He knew then about the distance, the age, the girlfriend.

But now he’s got several more months where talking to Dan on every social media available has seeped into his daily routine. He doesn’t go more than a few hours without interacting with him in some way. Twitter, texting, Facebook, Skype… Now Dan’s got a DailyBooth and he’ll be bombarded with that damn pretty face even more.

And he’s just tired of telling himself it doesn’t all add up to something that matters. He’s tired of telling himself otherwise: he fancies Dan.

Maybe admitting it to himself will help with getting over it. Because he _does_ have to get over it. Obviously. What else is there to do? Pine? Hope that a three-year relationship peters out without actively getting in the way (because he can’t convince himself to actively get in the way, he’s got to draw the line somewhere) and hope that when the dust settles Dan wants him just as badly?

That’s just stupid.

Phil may be stupid about a fair amount of things, but he can’t really afford to be stupid about this.

He can’t afford to delude himself like that. He hasn’t had enough romance in his life to toughen the muscle around his heart yet— is that a working metaphor, he wonders? Maybe not… the heart _is_ a muscle after all— he knows he’s going to feel every Dan-related disappointment keenly.

And he knows a lot of them are just around the corner; he’s going to feel the same Dan-related disappointment he already feels every day, and increased tenfold now that he’s realised what the warmth in his chest is. Now that he’s admitted to himself what it means.

Every time Dan mentions the girlfriend or says something to make Phil feel so, so old and so, so young at the same freaking time, or when he starts talking about where he’s going to uni and how it’ll inevitably be even further away from Phil than he already is, Phil just knows it— the Dan-related disappointment is going to smack him in the face. Every time Dan says something that makes Phil laugh so hard his sides ache, every time he posts a selfie that makes Phil’s brain genuinely short circuit for a moment because he looks so good, every time he’s a little less terrified of the world just because Dan’s… _there_ , the Dan-related disappointment is going to punch him in the gut.

And it’s going to be so fucking worth it.

He hasn’t fallen for someone quite this hard in a while. Maybe ever. And it’s messy, and it’s not the scenario he would’ve picked if he could. But that Dan-related disappointment, the disappointment that he isn’t his and ain’t bloody likely to be, it’s the energy he runs on now.

He’s gonna run on it until it runs dry, even if it’ll likely end badly. Even if it’ll likely end in flames. He really can’t turn back now.

He lays down on his bed, the cramped university bed that isn’t going to be his for much longer, and pushes his fringe off his forehead. He twists until he’s still lying on his back but his legs are slanted up, his feet flat against the wall.

He needs a distraction. He needs to think about something other than Dan’s eyes or Dan’s lips or the way Dan laughs when they’re both past the point of exhaustion and he screeches a generic animal screech. So he pulls his phone out of his pocket and calls the best antidote for an unrequited crush that anyone can hope for— his mum.

She doesn’t actually answer the phone; it’s his father who does. So Phil chats with him about his trip to Wales with his friends and the log cabin he was terrified of if only because it sounded like the setup for a horror film.

After a bit, his father hands the phone over to his mum. “Child!” she cries once she’s on the line. It warms him to his core because it’s such a mum thing to do.

“Hi mum,” he says. “How’re you?”

“I’m fine, Phil, I’m just fine. And you?”

“I’m alright.”

“ _Are_ you alright?” she asks, concerned by something in his tone. “You sound a little blue?”

“Blue? No, mum, if anything I’m… green.”

“Green? Oh dear, are you ill?”

“No, I just picked green randomly. I couldn’t think of another colour.”

“So you’re not blue?”

“Not entirely… maybe a little blue,” he admits.

“Just a dab?”

“Just a little blob of blue.”

“Right on your cheek?”

He smiles. “Yeah.”

“Oh,” she says, “I’m sorry to hear that, love.”

Thing is, he’s feeling less blue while talking to her. He’s not worried about his feelings for Dan or about his final exams or about what his life is going to look like a year from now. He’s just lying on his bed with his eyes closed and listening to his mother make a slight fuss worrying about him. And there’s something about that that’s always… nice. He’ll admit it. It’s nice sometimes, to be made a fuss over.

“Thanks, mum.”

They chat a little longer, about Martyn and how he’ll be visiting home shortly before his parents leave for five weeks in the autumn, about how much she’s looking forward to having him home in a week, about how she already knows just what cake she’ll have ready for him. It’s a good distraction.

Then they say goodbye, and he has some dinner before grabbing his laptop to Skype with Dan. So his mum’s distraction, while effective, was short-lived.

The next day he sees Dan post a DailyBooth recreating a photo Phil had previously posted holding Muse’s _The Resistance_. Dan’s wearing a shirt that looks close enough to the one Phil had been wearing in his own picture.

Phil’s chest tightens at the idea of Dan wearing his shirt for real. It’s a thought he can indulge in all he wants, so long as he keeps it in his head. So he does. And it’s good. It’s so fucking good.

*

Dan’s shaking so hard from nerves that several of the photos are blurry. He quickly deletes them, hoping they’re well and truly gone and he doesn’t live in some horrible alternate universe where instead of deleting them he’s accidentally emailed them to his nan.

This is stupid.

Just so fucking stupid— he feels stupid and he’s sure he looks stupid and he’s sure if he gets anymore embarrassed he’s gonna start sweating and his hair will start curling and he’ll feel even more stupid and _fuck_ why did he think this was a good idea?

When he’s finally settled on one photo he thinks will do, and one that passably will work as a backup, he’s quick to get his clothes back on.

Though his family never comes into his room anymore, and though if for some ungodly reason they felt prompted to they’d most certainly knock, the thought of being caught by anyone laying naked on his bed with his important bits covered by a strategically placed stuffed bear and a camera pointed at him as he lounged back on all his other plushies… less than pleasant. It’s enough to imagine himself literally dying of mortification, actually. 

As he stares at the photo before clicking “Post” he asks himself again just why the hell he thought this was a good idea— just what is he trying to prove? What is he trying to accomplish?

Is it just some insecure element of his personality, that wanting to scream into the void? Want to beg the strangers of the internet for validation? Does he want them to think he’s hot? …Is there someone, in particular, he’s hoping might tell him he’s hot?

Not that Phil hasn’t said as much. He’s called Dan pretty, he’s said he wants to poke Dan’s dimple, he’s said that the pout Dan makes in some photos is ‘dangerous’.

So maybe Dan thinks it’s a safe bet that Phil will like his nakedbooth.

But he wants Phil to _tell_ him. If Phil thinks he’s hot, Dan wants to know. He wants to know that this hint of _something_ that he feels sometimes during a late night Skype call isn’t all in his head. Or isn’t all one-sided.

An alert lights up his phone. It’s a text from Alice. “ _Wanna go see the new Tim Burton film? There’s a 7:30 showing_.”

His stomach was already twisted from sheer naked nerves, but now it twists from added guilt.

Sometimes he’ll think he and Alice are on the same page— not really in love anymore, not really invested in being together, not really brave enough to actually end things.

Then she’ll do something so fucking simple like asking her boyfriend if he wants to spend time with her and it makes Dan question his own understanding of the situation. Makes him think Alice is still fully committed to their relationship while he sits trying to pluck up the nerve to post a nearly-naked photo hoping that a specific someone who isn’t her will see it.

Dan wonders if his instinct should’ve been to send the photo to her. Alice doesn’t have a DailyBooth, he can’t even pretend she’s his target audience.

Maybe he should have taken a photo without bothering to cover the important bits with a bear. Maybe he should have texted it to her, asked if she liked what she saw, told her he missed her, promised to see her soon. But he didn’t do any of that. The photo isn’t for her. He doesn’t miss her. He’s not going to bother seeing her soon.

And he’s going to feel bad about it, sure, but him feeling bad about it doesn’t mean he won’t keep being a shit boyfriend.

He clicks “Post” before he can waste another second thinking about it.

“ _nah my mums gonna make me take adrian next week_ ” he texts her. And it’s a lie. Neither his parents nor his brother have said anything about the damn film. But every once in a while, he does get roped into big brother duty like taking Adrian to the cinema, so it’s a lie Alice believes readily. “ _u should go tho_ ”

“ _No worries! We could just hang out tonight then? <3_”

“ _u arent busy?_ ” He really doesn’t want to see her tonight when he’s already feeling so guilty. He wants to put that off as long as he can. And also he wants to stay by his laptop, refreshing his different social medias, seeing if Phil has anything to say about the photo.

“ _I’m never busy Dan_ ” she texts, even though she is always busy. “ _I miss you._ ”

And he feels even worse.

Why the fuck is he like this? Why can’t he just… love her? He used to— she used to mean everything to him. And then she started getting busier, doing actual things like work experience and uni prep. And he started having more heavy days and holing up with his laptop. But he could make a fucking effort. That might make all the difference.

“ _miss you too <3_” he sends, and it’s only partially a lie. He doesn’t miss her, really. He’s fine with not seeing her. He’s fine with not kissing her or touching her or feeling that clock that’s ticking down which he feels whenever he thinks about her. The one that’s gonna implode eventually when it runs out, and which he’s doing absolutely nothing to address other than avoiding her with the flimsiest excuses.

But he _does_ miss the way he used to feel about her. He misses what she used to mean to him. He’d go back to that in an instant if he could. At this point, at least, he still thinks he would. But maybe he only thinks that because he knows it isn’t an option.

His phone lights up. “ _Tonight? :3 Wanna watch Disturbia at mine?_ ”

They have a running joke that _Disturbia_ was a trash film, sure, but they both love it because of Sarah Roemer for him and Shia LaBeouf for her. And he still enjoys every moment Sarah Roemer’s onscreen, no doubt about it. But Dan’s wondering why he’s never told Alice that he enjoys seeing Shia LaBeouf just as much.

Why wouldn’t he tell her something that he’s been so fixated on lately, if she’s the person he’s supposed to want to tell everything to? Why does he worry she won’t understand, if she’s the person who’s supposed to know him best in the world?

Why does the thought of telling her make him feel his heartbeat in his throat?

He texts back, “ _:D_ ” and tries to remember if he’s ever been half as ecstatic as that emoticon in his life.

Ten minutes before he’s expecting her outside his house to pick him up, he gets a text from Phil that reads, “ _O_O Daniel Howell you owe me a new jumper, mine’s ruined after the nosebleed I got seeing your nakedbooth!!! *w* should be illegal to be that sexy_ ”

The deep satisfaction he gets reading that matches the deep blush that spreads across his face.

Then the satisfaction mixes and melds with his guilt, and he hears Alice honking outside earlier than he’d expected her, and he’s quite convinced he’s the worst person in the world.

He thinks maybe tonight he’ll find some kind of courageous spark and do it, end things. For both of their sakes. But he knows he won’t. He knows that it’s already taking every bit of energy he has just to see her at all. Just to go down the stairs. Just to kiss her when he opens the car door.


	4. Chapter 4

Phil’s only been back home for two days and already his parents have been getting on him. Saying he ought to have a job by November, saying he ought to be giving some sort of thought to his future.

As though that isn’t what he’s doing literally all the time.

As though the future isn’t constantly looming in front of him. As though it doesn’t threaten to swallow him whole. As though he doesn’t fold his limbs into odd shapes and screech animal noises and ascribe soap opera-worthy plots to his stuffed lions in a desperate and ineffectual attempt to think of anything but his future. His terrifying, daunting, frigid, unprepared-for future.

It just isn’t helping how shit he’s been feeling since he settled into being back home. 

Phil feels weirdly... regressive, being back here in his parents’ house. In his childhood bedroom. Like he’s been shoved into some box that past-Phil used to live in. Like he’s lost the freedom that came with university— the freedom to stumble into his bed drunk after a rough week, the freedom to kiss who he wanted and when he wanted, the freedom to know that even if he was unsure about parts of himself and his future still that at least he was living the parts he was sure about authentically.

And it isn’t that living with his parents means he can’t have these freedoms; they aren’t stopping him. They can’t, even if they’d want to. He’s 22 years old, after all.

It just feels like every day waking up facing the blue pinstriped walls, and standing up on the green carpet, and passing his poster of Uma Thurman on his way out to the bathroom to put his contacts in, that he’s stuck.

Not even stuck, because as messy as 22 seems he’d take it over how living at home is starting to feel.

Not stuck but backwards, 8000 steps backwards.

Like when he was 18, before he ever left. When he depended on his parents for everything, when he hadn’t even kissed a boy yet, when he was so afraid of the future and what the hell he’s meant to do with it. That’s how he’s feeling now. He’s afraid of the future and he hasn’t kissed anyone in ages and he depends far too much on his parents— he’s just buried under all of it.

He had thought this might happen. Said so in a video or two. That he’s not exactly mature, that he’s not exactly ready to be a man. He thinks he probably could be if he weren’t just stagnant here. 

It’s not a bad bedroom. It’s not a bad house. They aren’t bad parents. He doesn’t want to start feeling that way— he loves his bedroom, he loves his house, he loves his parents. 

These messy feelings are just… they’re a lot. And he isn’t sure where to direct them. 

Some of them get directed towards Dan. Not the worst of his insecurities, he still wants Dan to be impressed with him on some level. Still wants Dan to think he’s a person with some semblance of a plan. 

But he complains enough to Dan about feeling stuck, about feeling backwards, that he feels better just for having said it. And he feels better for the understanding head tilt Dan gives him. And he feels better for the dumb jokes Dan tells to try to cheer him up, “Because I owe you,” he says. “You always make me laugh.” 

So Phil’s just kinda playing it by ear at the moment. He’s trying to figure it out, _it_ being… his entire fucking life. 

He’s thinking about what job would possibly be relevant with the degrees he picked up just because he liked them. He’s thinking about the videos he wants to make and how long he supposes he can keep making them. He’s thinking about Dan— he’s kinda always thinking about Dan— and how he really hasn’t been subtle lately about liking him but how Dan really doesn’t seem to mind. 

Dan warns him over MSN the first night that they finally add one another on there, “ _i might call you crying tomorrow_ ” 

“ _omg why?? O_o_ ”

“ _i might not but just like a heads up i guess_ ” 

It takes Phil ten more worried minutes to wring it out of him. Dan says tomorrow he’s probably gonna end things with the girlfriend, and it’ll be sad, but he’s been meaning to do it for a while. 

Phil has a thought flash through him like lightning that he’ll later chide himself for as being selfish. The thought that a single Dan is a whole different enigma— a single Dan could fancy him back, a single Dan could be _his_. 

That’s terrible, of course. Dan’s literally expecting to cry over this. Phil can’t be waiting to pounce, he needs to be a decent goddamn friend. 

“ _Sure you can’t work things out? You’ve been with her a long time yeah?_ ” 

“ _bit too long maybe_ ” Dan says, “ _thats kinda the problem_ ” 

“ _Whatcha mean?_ ” 

“ _skype pls?_ ”

Phil hurries to log in. When Dan picks up, he does look very sad. He’s looking down towards the bottom of the screen and his fringe is falling in his face. “I mean I’ve been with Alice for ages. And we were both different people when we started… we were both kids! We don’t even know each other now. We just know who we used to be.” 

Phil’s frowning. He wishes he had good advice, hell any advice. He may be older than Dan, but this is not in his wheelhouse. “Why tomorrow? What made up your mind?” 

Dan shrugs. “I put it off ‘til the last minute really.” 

He doesn’t know what answer he’s hoping for when he asks Dan, “Because you weren’t sure?” 

“No,” he says. He looks up at Phil for the first time. “No, I’m just a coward is all. And also, I guess I didn’t _realise_ we didn’t know each other until,” he pauses, blushes, clears his throat, “until I had something to compare it to.” 

Phil tries to keep his voice steady when he says, “Yeah?” 

“Call me a sap all you like, Lester, but er… I don’t think anyone’s ever known me as well as you do.” 

Phil thinks that over for a moment, lets the words settle in the gaps between his ribs. He and Dan have talked a lot over the last few months, talked constantly about everything and nothing and about the world and themselves. And he thinks he’s blushing as well because he realises that’s true for him too. No one’s ever known him like Dan. 

“It’s not the sappiest thing you’ve ever said,” Phil smiles. He can see Dan’s hand shaking when he lifts it to brush his fringe out of his eyes. “So you’ll be sad?” he asks. 

Dan nods. “I’ll be sad,” he says, “and I dunno, I’ll be relieved too. I shouldn’t have put it off this long. She’s about to go off to uni.”

“I hope you won’t be too sad,” Phil offers. 

“It’d serve me right. I’ve been… I’ve been really fucking selfish for a really fucking long time.” 

Phil’s instinct is to counter that, to say _no, Dan, you aren’t selfish_ or even _Dan, everyone’s selfish sometimes_ , but that’s not what this is about, he realises. This isn’t about Dan wanting to be told something that makes everything magically better. He just wants to be heard. He just wants to spit this all out to someone who cares, and to be heard. So Phil hears him. 

“It’ll be fine, Phil,” Dan goes on. “I just thought I ought to warn you, in case I call you. Because you’re the only person I ever want to talk to. And if I’m bawling my eyes out I don’t want you to think I’m dying or something. I’m not dying. I’m just the world’s worst boyfriend.”

“Only for a few more hours, though,” Phil says. He’s trying for a joke, he’s trying to lift Dan’s spirits. “Then you’ll be the world’s most average ex.” 

“Average. Mediocrity. Tolerable.” Dan actually grins. “That’s my sweet spot.” 

Phil’s trying to think of the last time Dan made him feel anything average. Of the last time anything Dan said was mediocre. Of the last time a look or a smile or a laugh from Dan was merely tolerable. He comes up blank. 

*

Alice looks sad; Dan can’t get around that. But she also looks so pretty. She’d pulled her hair up into a bun sometime earlier in the day, but little pieces have long since fallen and are tickling her face. Dan likes her hair like that; he likes when he kisses her and the little fallen strands tickle his face too. Her eyes are looking a little less sad as she makes progress on a beer. They’re starting to sparkle a bit. 

Dan, on very rare occasions, could be the cause of that sparkle. Unfortunately, more often than not lately, he’ll say something that slowly dims it. Then he feels like an ass for the rest of the night because he can’t be what she deserves and he can’t be bothered to try anymore. 

He used to at least try. In the beginning. 

He doesn’t really remember when he stopped. 

Maybe this all would’ve been easier if she wasn’t so pretty. If she wasn’t beautiful, if she wasn’t so sweet, if she didn’t smell so nice. Maybe then it’d have been easier for him to realise he doesn’t want her. But, in that world, this whole thing would be harder in a different way— if she wasn’t the peak of everything he’s supposed to want, if she wasn’t the ideal, it’d be harder for him to admit to himself that something different is just as enticing. 

If she weren’t so pretty he could lie to himself and say all he wants is someone prettier. But she _is_ pretty. And Phil’s pretty, too. And he wants Phil. 

“We gonna finally have that conversation we’ve been avoiding?” she asks him, leaning close so he can smell her shampoo and the beer she’s already finished. The mix of scents makes him feel something he can’t really identify. Maybe it’ll come to him later. 

He’s spending time with his friends, people who are meant to be his friends. They don’t feel particularly friendly; maybe he never had much to compare it to before. This is the last time he’ll see them all before they scatter for university and he remains behind doing… whatever the hell he’s going to be doing during his gap year. 

They’d played football earlier and Dan snuck off to climb a tree; now they’re sitting on picnic tables with their feet on the benches, drinking cheap beers as the sun sets and debating whether they want to go to a club, a pub, or for pizza. 

Dan hasn’t voted for any of the options, doesn’t really care between them when all he wants to do is be back in his bedroom talking to Phil, thinking about Phil, wanking to the glimpse of Phil’s chest hair in his “Burning Walrus” video which Dan may or may not have watched roughly 100 times in the last month since it was posted— things he can’t exactly do here surrounded by these people that feel more like strangers the longer he sits silently among them. 

It’s like they don’t even notice that he hasn’t said a word. That ought to be unusual; sometimes he can’t shut up and they all groan because he annoys the fuck out of them. Shouldn’t they notice that he’s not saying anything? Are they just that relieved? 

Even Alice hasn’t noticed, and she usually notices everything. She usually notices things long before Dan does. 

Eventually, the group settles on a pub about a fifteen-minute walk away. Dan thinks he may need a little more time than that, considering he knows he’s gonna meander for a while before he even says what he needs to. So he slips his hand into Alice’s, but doesn’t lace their fingers, and says to her, “Wanna take the scenic route?” 

“We’ll meet you all there,” she says to anyone who’s listening, though no one seems to be. 

They’re walking the long way through the park, and the damp grass squelches under his shoes in a way that reminds him of the unpleasant squelching in his own stomach. This is it. This is what he’s been avoiding and now it’s staring him in the face. 

This is the last time he’s going to see her before she’s off to uni. And there’s been an indecisive static in the air between them for months over whether they’re going to bother with long distance. 

A year ago, Dan wouldn’t have thought twice. A year ago, Dan didn’t feel so distant from everything that once made up his entire life. Of course having any bit of Alice was better than nothing, of course long distance was difficult but it wouldn’t last forever, of course he loved her enough to make everything worth it. 

These days, his immense indifference towards her, callous and cruel though it is, makes the idea of long distance appealing if only because such a relationship would require less effort on his end. He’d have to see her less, he’d have to pay less attention, he’d have to put on a performative mask of presence less often. At the same time, his immense indifference also means that long distance doesn’t seem at all worth the effort, minimal though it would be. 

And, of course, dragging things out doesn’t really seem fair to her. Not when she could meet someone in her new town that could actually give a shit. The way he used to. 

So it should be an easy choice. He just hasn’t bothered making it. Because he loves her… well, he loved her. And because she’s all he’s ever known. 

Until last night, of course. When he decided in a moment that felt impulsive, but really couldn’t be after all these months of build-up. Decided _and_ told Phil about it, so now he can’t back out. 

He’s been hoping for weeks that Alice will just up and end things herself. But part of him thinks she knows that he’s hoping that, and is refusing to do so either because she’s hurt or she’s stubborn or she’s trying to teach him a lesson. That she wants him to grow a pair and stop fucking procrastinating and make a bloody choice. 

Maybe she doesn’t know though, another part of him thinks. Maybe she still loves him, still wants to be with him, and he’s about to break her heart. 

His phone buzzes in his pocket. He lets go of her hand to check it. It’s Phil (it’s always Phil) asking if he’s back home yet, if he’s free to get on MSN or Skype. He doesn’t ask outright if Dan’s okay, but Dan kinda figures that’s what Phil means by texting him. 

Dan almost forgets who he’s walking with as he looks at his phone screen. When he remembers, he feels like an asshole through and through. He texts back, “ _later? still out w irl friends rn :/_ ” 

Phil sends back, “ _k! later <3_” almost immediately, and Dan doesn’t realise he’s smiling until Alice pokes her index finger into his dimple. 

That gesture jolts him back into the moment, almost violently. She used to do that all the time. He used to tell her how his dimples, even though he hated them, could belong to her because she was the only reason he smiled. But they don’t seem to belong to her anymore; haven’t for a long while. When he thinks of the dents in his cheeks he thinks first that they’re nothing but a broken pixel on his face, and second of how often Phil has said he likes them. 

“Sorry,” he says. “Distracted.” 

“You get distracted a lot.” She sounds like a crabby mum saying that. God, is that what he’s reduced her to in his mind? Someone who nags him. He really can’t go thirty seconds without realising what an ass he is, can he? As shitty as hating himself is, knowing he’s justified in hating himself is like… a billion times worse. 

At least in very special episodes of American family sitcoms, when the teenager hates themselves they learn by the end of the episode that they aren’t worthless after all. Then there’s Dan— he kicks a pebble and it bounces off a tree trunk but he doesn’t register how satisfying that is— who feels worthless and is worthless, so he just feels bad all the fucking time and gets to be self-aware about it _and_ gets to be self-pitying… 

Fun, real fucking fun. 

“See,” Alice says, breaking him out of his own head, “you’re distracted again.” 

He sighs heavily, frustrated with his own bullshit, but she misinterprets the sigh as frustration with her and stops walking abruptly. 

“Don’t get pissy, Dan,” she says, a fight ready in her tone.

“I’m not,” he shrugs. 

“Are we gonna talk or not?” 

“Do you love me?” He doesn’t mean to ask it. He’s not really sure what he’s hoping she’ll say. It’s probably the worst possible way to begin this dreaded conversation, but hell, it’s what he goes with. 

She takes a moment longer to answer than he would have expected. He figured she’d answer on autopilot, an old reflex. It’s what he does, after all. 

“Of course I love you,” she says in a voice too resigned. 

She’s only about two feet away from him but it feels like she’s fucking worlds away. How can it feel like that, when she’s right here saying that she loves him, and with Phil being 300km away Dan can sometimes swear he’s right by his side? Whenever he sees a dog and wants to text Phil, whenever he thinks of a joke he knows Phil will laugh at. But with Alice… Alice has felt worlds away from him for ages, and the frayed tether between them just needs to be cut. He just needs to cut it. 

“Are you _in_ love with me?” he specifies. 

“What’re you on about, Dan?” She crosses her arms across her chest, defensively, protectively. 

“What do you love about me?” he asks, feeling frantic now with how it’s finally settling in that this is happening, that he’s not procrastinating anymore, that this conversation is fucking happening. “I’m not fishing for compliments here, Alice. Just, what could you _possibly_ love about me? What about me makes you so sure this is all worth it? Any of this? Why the fuck do you put up with me?”

She doesn’t respond to his word vomit, and he can’t really blame her. 

What did he expect her to do, anyway? List off his lovable qualities, of which he has never been less certain than ever? That’s not something you just up and ask of someone who’s been saying they love you for years, and literally just said so again forty seconds ago. 

“Y’know,” she says, looking past him to the edge of the park where the street begins again, “I used to think I’d want this to be a proper conversation when it inevitably happened. One where we, like, I dunno, reminisced on the good run we had and came to the conclusion that it wasn’t really anybody’s fault and we’re just young and this is how life works out, or something. But now I’m just kinda sick of this. It sucks. Just get it over with.”

“Okay,” he nods. They aren’t saying what they need to say, but they’re clearly on the same page about what exactly is happening here. 

“Say it.” Her face is red and stained with tear tracks. He hadn’t noticed her tears building at all, but now they’re flowing steady. She still won’t look at him and Dan’s heart is broken clean in two. “I waited long enough. C’mon. Say it.” 

“We’re breaking up,” he says, though his voice cracks halfway through and he’s not sure how he actually gets the words out but he does. 

“Don’t share the credit here, Dan. This is your doing.” Her jaw is clenched so tight. “Own it.” 

“I’m… breaking up with you?” He’s not sure why it became a question at the end. He definitely is. 

She nods. 

“I’m sorry,” he says, deflated. 

“Yeah,” she shrugs. “Me too.” But she doesn’t say what for.


	5. Chapter 5

Phil feels like it takes ages for Dan to text him that he’s back home and free to Skype. When Dan answers the call, he isn’t crying. But Phil can tell that he had been. Dan’s face is splotchy, his eyes are swollen.

He’s not sure what emotion he’s feeling when he sees Dan looking like that. He thinks it’s a big mix of many.

He’s sad that Dan’s been crying, and maybe a little disappointed that Dan waited until afterwards to get on Skype. It’s not like Phil hadn’t been expecting that he’d cry; Dan had warned him after all. And now he’s not going to have that satisfaction of picking Dan up from those depths, or at least trying to. And something that looks like worry tells Phil that Dan doesn’t want him to comfort like that. Which is disappointing. Then he feels selfish for feeling disappointment, because Dan’s sad and that’s what his focus should be on. So he feels guilt over being selfish. And he feels warmth, a twinge of warmth that is just automatic these days when he sees Dan’s face, even if that face is red and blotchy and tearstained.

So yeah, a big mix of many emotions.

“Hey,” he says, striking as neutral a tone as possible and waiting to let Dan’s mood dictate the conversation.

“Hey, Phil,” he says. Then he doesn’t say anything more.

Phil clears his throat, wonders if he dares ask the question he’s dying to ask. Then he does. “Am I right in assuming that I’m speaking with a single man?” Phil prods.

Dan nods. Once. Slowly.

“Do you wanna talk about it?”

Dan shakes his head. Many times. Quickly.

“Okay.” Phil tries to give an appropriate kind of smile, but he isn’t sure what the hell that’s supposed to be. Encouraging? Reassuring? Maybe any smile at all is inappropriate. “Want a distraction?”

“Please.”

Phil sets his laptop on the bed beside him and stands to grab something which he lifts with an exaggerated groan. “I’m a man now, Dan. See?” He holds up the box for his webcam to focus on. “My dad got me a cordless hammer drill.”

“Is it a hammer or a drill?” Dan asks, and he smiles, and Phil’s heart gives such a great big thump, he thinks surely Dan should be able to hear it.

“No idea, but no cord in sight!”

“You should use it in a video,” Dan says.

“What?” Phil asks, “Actually drill something? Actually try to build something?”

They both have a laugh at that image.

“I meant like show it off and joke about how that’s why you’re a man now. Y’know, as opposed to,” he waves his hand towards Phil, “everything else.”

Phil nods. “Probably the only use I’d get out of it, putting it in a video.”

“Why’d your dad get you a mad thing like that anyway?”

Phil shrugs. “So I could be a man. So I could know what to do with my degrees, so I could get a job, so I could figure my life out.”

“And a cordless hammer drill’s gonna do all that?”

“I guess he thinks a man who knows what to do with his degrees and has a job and has his life figured out is the kind of man who owns a cordless hammer drill,” Phil says.

He can feel how his face has dropped. His whole body suddenly feels a bit heavier.

Everything feels heavier with it, especially the silence hanging between them now as Dan seems to be sitting on Phil’s words. He’s furrowing his brow and looking at Phil with an impossible to name emotion— or at least, Phil finds it impossible to name. The closest he can come up with is _searching_.

“Can I say something weird?” Dan asks.

“Have I ever given the impression I don’t love weird?”

Dan sits up then, leans forward away from his headboard and towards his webcam. “Neither of us really knows what we’re doing. And… I dunno, I’m all sad tonight and you get sad about not having a proper job as though YouTube isn’t the coolest job ever.” He moves to adjust his fringe and Phil finds himself doing the same, mirroring him. “In some sick way, I kinda like that we’re both a little sad about stupid life things together.”

“Yeah,” Phil nods, “it’s just another thing on the list we have in common. We both like Muse and we both like _Lost_ and we both don’t know what we’re doing with our lives.”

“Exactly.” Dan leans back against his headboard. He has a smile so warm Phil can feel it from 300km away.

They talk a while longer, distracting Dan like he had wanted. Eventually, Phil notices the droop in Dan’s eyelids and the tilt of Dan’s head and the slight delay in Dan’s reactions. He looks at the length of the call; they’ve been at it for hours. That’s just how they are by now.

“You tired?” he asks him.

Dan nods. He yawns. Phil wants to tell him he’s the most adorable person in the world, but bites his tongue just in time. Dan’s literally only a few hours single. He doesn’t need Phil flirting with him while he’s half asleep and mourning the freshly buried relationship.

They say goodnight, after a few more minutes of waffling.

Phil lies in his bed afterwards wondering how bad of a friend he would be to keep flirting with Dan instead of giving him the space he deserves to… like, process?

But he figures if he had the willpower for that, he would’ve stopped flirting in the first place, would’ve stopped flirting while he knew Dan was spoken for. Now that he isn’t— now that he’s available if a bit banged up, if a bit soft still from the fallout— Phil doesn’t think he could stop even if he tried.

And he doesn’t want to try.

He really, really doesn’t want to stop.

Phil can’t sleep and at 3:30 am he posts a DailyBooth that Dan later comments on with, “ _i was still awake at 3. i should have had my laptop on still. quite a manly photo i think =P_ ” and Phil can’t be too disappointed at the lost opportunity to talk to Dan even more last night because Dan thinks he’s quite manly, drill or no drill.

*

Dan sees a tweet from Phil on what is technically the last day of September because it is near an hour past midnight that reads, “ _i cant wait for people to be back!! this house is big and scary =|_ ” and just like any time Dan reads a social media post of Phil’s these days, his first instinct is to respond. To get Phil to laugh. It used to be to get Phil to notice him, but now all these months later it’s as simple as that, to get him to laugh.

Because he loves Phil’s laugh and he loves being the person to make him laugh, so he’s desperate for any opportunity to do so.

He does some googling for a quick price check, then tweets at Phil, “ _id fill up some of that house space but reading to manchester is £70 D:_ ”

Even though Phil tweets back something that reads as a joke while making Dan’s stomach knot, he also sends Dan a text only a few moments later. “ _You looked up ticket prices? :]_ ”

Dan responds with shaking fingers, “ _no weirdo. thats just common knowledge_ ”

Phil takes long enough to respond that Dan’s already tumbled into three different spirals.

One being how could he be so fucking stupid to look up ticket prices and to _tell_ Phil he’d looked up ticket prices like a freaking stalker and maybe Phil doesn’t get that when he makes stalking jokes that he’s totally joking that he would never go to Manchester unless Phil wanted him to and clearly Phil wouldn’t want him too, therefore, he’s never _actually_ going to go to Manchester even if he did look up ticket prices. The second was maybe Phil hated that Dan called him a weirdo and thought that Dan meant it, and well… he _did_ mean it but he meant it like a good thing and shit why is tone impossible to convey over text, shit shit shit. The third was interrupted when Phil’s text came through—

It reads, “ _There’s a ‘your mum’ joke somewhere in your tweet about filling up some of my house space but I can’t think of one that isn’t the worst thing I’ll ever say_ ”

“ _what holds the current record for worst thing youve ever said_ ” Dan asks, the relief running through him.

He needs to stop doing that, he scolds himself. He needs to stop panicking every time he thinks he said something idiotic.

Phil’s his best friend. Dan’s feelings might be more muddled, might be some mixture of attraction and idolization and camaraderie that resulted from the slow morphing he did from fan to friend. But at the core, that’s true: they’re best friends. So, no matter what Dan’s spirals tell him, Phil’s not gonna kick him to the curb for calling him a weirdo, and he’s gotta stop thinking that’s even possible.

“ _Probably everything I’ve ever said, ever *-*_ ”

“ _yeahhh =P best not to top that_ ”

Dan’s phone starts ringing in his hand. Phil’s calling him. Normally Dan dreads talking on the phone, and he knows Phil does too, but he actually thinks this might be perfect— no tone getting lost in textual translation, but unlike on Skype Phil won’t be able to see how often he makes Dan blush.

He answers the phone with what he hopes is a casual, “Hey,” even if his voice is an octave higher than he’d like it.

“You looked up ticket prices,” Phil says, even though that’s exactly what he’d said earlier. And Dan decides this is actually the worst after all, because even if they aren’t texting he can’t infer a single fucking thing from Phil’s tone.

“Er,” he says, “yeah. Yeah, I did. I mean, not that closely. Didn’t look up dates and times or if any particular stations worked best. But… yeah… Reading to Manchester looked to be around £70.”

Phil’s quiet a little too long for Dan’s liking. He hears him clear his throat before he finally speaks. “I’ve been meaning to ask you something but… it kinda just makes me feel like an absolute creep.”

“A creep?”

“Yeah,” Phil laughs, but it’s a bitter unamused laugh that hits Dan in the gut.

They’re quiet. It doesn’t even sound like either of them are breathing.

“Maybe you should ask me anyways?” Dan says.

Phil laughs again, a gentler laugh this time, though still shaky with what Dan figures must be nerves. “Seriously, Dan, tell me to fuck off if I make you like… uncomfortable. I’m, well, a bit older than you. And maybe I should be putting the ball in your court here or like, whatever an appropriate sports metaphor is… but, er, with you looking up ticket prices and all it has me thinking—”

“—spit it out, Lester,” Dan says. Phil’s nerves are seeping through the phone and Dan’s going to lose his mind if he doesn’t stop circling.

“We should meet. Like properly. In person.” Phil says. “You should come to Manchester and we should hang out.”

That whole grateful-they’re-not-on-Skype-or-Phil-would-see-him-blush feeling comes back in full force. Asking your best friend to hang out doesn’t qualify one as a creep, he thinks. Asking someone you’re maybe possibly interested in to travel hours to come see you…? That’s when an age gap might make a person hesitate.

“Yeah,” Dan croaks. His voice had cracked and shaken despite the word being literally one syllable and he wishes he were near a bridge he could throw himself off.

“Maybe sometime next month?”

“That sounds great, Phil.” He stands and starts to pace his room because he’s suddenly filled with too much energy. “You’re not a creep,” he laughs, “don’t worry. I thought _I’d_ be a creep if I suggested it. Like a crazy fan who couldn’t respect boundaries or something.” 

Phil laughs. “That’s stupid.”

“Your mum’s stupid.”

“You don’t even know my mum!”

“Not yet I don’t,” Dan says. “Introduce me to her when I’m up north.”

Phil laughs again, and now Dan’s thinking phone calls maybe _are_ the worst after all because if they were on Skype he could see that laugh and see the way Phil’s tongue pokes between his teeth and see the way Phil looks at him when he’s made him laugh.

When Dan wakes up well past noon the next day, the first notification he has on his phone is for a Phil tweet. It says, “ _i think october is going to be good :]_ ”


	6. Chapter 6

Phil doesn’t hear Martyn knocking on his bedroom door and saying that dinner’s almost ready, because he’s editing and has his headphones on. He nearly jumps out of his skin when he turns to see Martyn standing by his bed and reaching for his shoulder, not having heard him come in either.

He can see Martyn’s body shaking, laughing at him because of the jump, and he pulls his headphones off to yell at him but decides against it because he can tell his voice wouldn’t come out clearly and he doesn’t want to give Martyn more ammunition.

As far as brothers go, his doesn’t tease him too awfully and they get along quite well, but there are limits to everything.

“You got any hair dye leftover?” Martyn asks him. “You’ve gone white with the shock.”

“Shut up,” Phil groans, closing his laptop. He knows Martyn is lying because that’s just not how shock works, but also because he can see where his fringe dips in front of his eye and it’s as black as ever.

His laughter has finally died down by the time he tells Phil, “Dinner’s almost ready. Stop holing away up here and come see your family. I leave tomorrow!”

“Alright, alright.” Phil stands and follows him out the door.

He hasn’t intentionally been holed up in his room the entirety of Martyn’s visit. That’s just where he spends most of his time these days. That’s just where he films and edits his videos, where he scrolls through Twitter and Facebook and DailyBooth. Where he Skypes Dan and texts Dan and thinks about Dan.

He didn’t put much thought into whether or not Martyn would notice, but he supposes it should’ve been obvious.

Usually, when they’re both on a visit home they spend the time recreating the better parts of their childhoods: pouring over video games and old nostalgic movies, crawling through the woods behind their neighbourhood and exploring the nearby abandoned hospital, eating all their mum’s delicious food. But this isn’t a visit for Phil; he’s living at home now. So it felt a little different.

Plus he’s been distracted, and not by something he can really confide in his brother about, much as he thinks maybe he’d like to.

It’s not like this is anything new, really. Phil being into a boy. That’s happened before. But never while he was at home, never while he felt his parents’ eyes constantly on him. They’re scrutinizing him, without really ever saying so because they’re a family that gets along just fine and enjoys one another’s company; scrutinizing him about his career and his money and his future. Tacking his love life onto the list is not something he’s interested in, thank you very much.

Besides, his love life isn’t of the variety they’d expect from him. They don’t want to hear about the boy he fancies. They want news of someone decidedly more feminine. And sure maybe Phil might be able to offer that to them someday, but right now it’s a boy that has his attention and he doesn’t want to bother thinking about any other possibility.

Martyn should be someone he can confide in about it. Martyn probably knows, or at the very least suspects, anyways. He’s on social media, and Phil’s not known for subtlety online.

But Phil feels like there’s something nebulous stopping him from confiding in his brother. Martyn is his own warped reflection, the perfect son that Phil simply can’t be.

Martyn is athletic and knows just what all those tools their father is always buying them are for. Martyn may have his music on the side but he’s got a proper job and a proper degree. Martyn has a lovely Swedish girlfriend and no non-heteronormative skeletons in his closet.

And, really, shouldn’t all of this have been a comfort? The idea that Martyn is everything his parents could want in a traditional son should’ve let Phil off the hook, right?

They got one not-disappointment, after all. With Martyn ticking all the right boxes, shouldn’t Phil be allowed to be a disappointment of a son without being… well? A disappointment.

Phil knows it isn’t Martyn’s fault. Knows it isn’t Martyn’s fault and isn’t his parent’s fault and isn’t even his fault. Hell, he knows nothing _is_ at fault at all, really. Just, well, everything feels messy and bad. And tangled. And cramped. And he figures things maybe wouldn’t feel that way if he’d gotten a responsible degree and if he had any idea what he’d like for a career and if he fancied someone whose gender matched with the gender Phil’s parents assume he ought to fancy.

Then he gets a text message from Dan while seated at the dinner table with his family. And he doesn’t feel so messy and bad and tangled and cramped in the moment that he reads it, because Dan sending, “ _skype later? work sux i miss ur face :]_ ” makes him feel something else entirely. Something good and clear and warm and light.

“Philip,” his mum says, “phone away, please.”

He listens without even considering otherwise, slipping his phone into his pocket without taking the extra four seconds to text Dan back.

His parents are leaving tomorrow to be gone for five weeks— including, though he’s trying his best not to think of this while sat at the dinner table with his mum’s eyes still on him, the three days of Dan’s visit— so Phil’s trying not to begrudge her the interest she has in family time until then.

So he listens to her and puts his phone away. She’s his mum and she asked him to do something. She’s his mum and she used his full name as a cue that he ought to listen. She’s his mum and because he’s back in her house, in his old bedroom, in his old life, she looks at him like he’s a child.

Dan doesn’t look at him like he’s a child.

Dan looks at him like he’s a man, like he’s 22 years old, like he’s sitting on multiple degrees. Because he is. Dan looks at him like he knows what he’s doing. And Phil thinks, for the first time, that maybe he does.

When it comes to Dan, at least, maybe he does know what he’s doing.

Because he’s hesitated before. He’s waited too long to make sure someone knew what they meant to him, and then they slipped through his fingers. He’s missed out on _potentials_ and _maybes_ and _almosts_.

He won’t be doing that this time around.

Not when he’s pretty sure Dan’s the most promising _potential_ and _maybe_ and _almost_ he’s come across yet.

So he’s going to be sure he tells Dan how much he likes his dimples and how much he likes listening to Dan’s rambling rants. He’s going to be sure he tells Dan how the sound of Skype’s ringtone has given him a Pavlovian tightness in his chest, and it’s all Dan’s fault.

He’s going to be sure to tell Dan, even if his hands shake and he’s so nervous he’s almost dizzy from it, because he needs to know that if someone slips through his fingers this time it won’t be because he hesitated again. Hesitated because of fear or uncertainty or worse.

He hates the thought of losing Dan, here before they’ve even really started, before he even really has Dan in the first place.

And the thought of losing Dan due to his own inaction seems catastrophic, seems like the worst thing in the world.

So he tells Dan these things, later when the sun has gone down and they’re both leaning in towards their computer screens. Tells Dan about the dimples and the ramblings and the tightness. Dan blushes and tries not to smile but ends up smiling anyway. He says, “Shut up,” with the fondest fucking tone and Phil feels that tightness in his chest again.

*

The lube was a stupid impulsive purchase that Dan’s well and truly regretting. He’s so incredibly hard but also so incredibly intimidated and the combination is going to prove to be too much, he’s sure of it. His heart’s just going to explode and blood will gush from his ears and his mum is gonna find his dead body here in two weeks after he starts to stink up the house: naked on his bed and with a finger halfway up his ass.

He’d picked it up after a shift at Asda through the self-checkout and his pulse has not slowed down since. Which is fucking stupid… it’s just lube— he’s eighteen goddamn years old! He shouldn’t be freaking out like this.

But he is.

He just wanted to know what it was like. He wanted to know if he would like it. He wanted some kind of frame of reference just in case this was ever something that maybe someone else wanted to try with him someday. Hypothetically.

And well… it turns out he does like it.

After he takes a few deep breaths and reminds himself that he isn’t actually doing anything wrong even if it maybe feels like he is. After he gets a rhythm going and gets the angle figured out.

After he lets himself imagine they’re not his fingers at all but rather Phil’s, and let’s himself imagine that it’s also Phil when he moves his other hand to wank, and let’s himself go so far as to whisper Phil’s name as his breath catches in his throat because against his own fears of a couple minutes ago, he _does_ like it— he likes it so, so much.

He likes it enough to come harder than he can ever remember coming before, even if the twist of his arm doesn’t make sense when he bucks forward and the literal kind of emptiness he feels afterwards was unexpected and just this side of uncomfortable. He likes it enough to wonder why he’d never tried it before.

He soaks in the post-orgasm haze and thinks about how his bed is too small to feel so empty.

He has a quick shower and a long nap.

He spends far too long afterwards thinking of an appropriate hiding place for the lube because he wants it easily accessible for next time— Jesus Christ he’s already looking forward to next time—but also feels like everywhere he thinks to tuck it away is the first place his mum would look if for some ungodly reason she had to poke around his room.

When he’s talking with Phil later that night, Phil’s trying to talk him into actually filming a YouTube video like he’s always done ever since Dan first asked him for editing tips.

Dan wants to, he really wants to. He’s just nervous he’ll be shit at it. And he doesn’t want to have Phil tell him he’s shit at it, or worse yet, he doesn’t want Phil to lie to him about whether he’s shit or not.

“Just an intro or something,” Phil insists. “There’s no pressure with an intro, and you can get used to talking and editing that way like a trial run before you start making others.”

Dan nods. He would’ve just fucking done it ages ago if he weren’t the deadly combination of a procrastinator and a perfectionist.

So Phil’s constant prodding is actually quite helpful. It means he really might do it one of these days. 

They’ve been Skyping maybe forty minutes when Phil leans forward to tilt the screen because his foot has fallen asleep and he needs to change the way he’s sitting. When he leans forward, the screen’s light accentuates the contrast between his pale skin and the stubble he hasn’t bothered to shave.

Dan has a quick moment where images fly through his head, all featuring that stubble.

The feel of it against the palms of his hands if he were to grab Phil’s face and pull him into a kiss. The feel of it against his neck if Phil were to lick and bite and kiss him there. The feel of it against the soft flesh of his inner thigh if Phil were to—!

Even his imagination short circuits at that.

The rough scratch of the stubble and just where he can imagine feeling it, well... those images are best saved for when Phil can’t see him blush.

Still, he can’t look away from it. Even if Phil isn’t leaning forward and it isn’t so visible anymore, Dan’s looking at the pixelated shadows above his perfect fucking cupid’s bow and along his could-cut-glass jawline.

It’s so hot; it’s so decidedly masculine and so fucking hot. And that’s okay. Isn’t it? It has to be, because he’s feeling it whether it’s okay or not.

Phil Lester is a man with stubble on his face, and it’s so fucking hot that Dan hasn’t actually heard a word he’s said in about 90 seconds. But it doesn’t really matter, because the next words he actually manages to catch is Phil saying, “You should wear those black earrings more often. They’re pretty. You’re so pretty.”

It’s throwing Dan back to the day he posted his first picture on DailyBooth, and the comment Phil left that had kept him smiling for weeks. He can feel the rosy patch near his jaw grow warmer as he blushes.

He reaches a hand up to fiddle with the earring in his left ear. “Yeah?” he says, “been thinking of changing to studs.”

“They all look great,” Phil says. “I like the black best though.”

“Me too,” Dan smiles.

“Then why change them?”

Dan shrugs. “Might like something else better? Should try and see, right?”

Dan doesn’t mean it like a test, was genuinely talking about earrings in this particular moment and nothing deeper, but Phil’s furrowing his brow before he answers like he thinks it might be. After what feels like ages, he finally says, “Yeah, why not? Try new things.”


	7. Chapter 7

Phil doesn’t see the tweets until after they’re already hours old. He kicks himself when he does, anguished over the fact that the one freaking day he’s away from the internet and in town with Ian also seems to be the day Dan has a genuine meltdown. 

There’d been hints that something like this was coming.

A week before, Dan had tweeted out “ _i feel empty. i want to say sad, but that isnt complicated enough to describe how im feeling. i feel lost and i dont know what i want_ ” 

Phil had texted him once he saw that, asked if he was okay, asked if he wanted to talk about it. Dan said he didn’t. Said he wanted to be distracted. So Phil tried, he tried to distract him by talking about the train tickets they’d looked up and which were actually just under £50 instead of the earlier estimated £70. He tried to distract him by talking about the giant spider he’d found on his neck. He tried to distract him by suggesting they Skype, but Dan said he was too tired. 

That stood out to Phil; they’ve spent hours and hours and hours on Skype. Dan had never been too tired before. But he also wasn’t going to push it, he didn’t want to seem too needy of Dan’s time and he also didn’t want to make him feel any worse. 

He woke up to a normal, happy, somewhat flirty text from Dan in the morning, and he figured that whatever Dan was feeling so empty over the night before had cleared up. And most of the next week was normal as well. 

In fact, the parts that weren’t normal were all not-normal in a good way. A great way. 

They were moments where Dan purchased his tickets north. Where they agreed to be each other’s pillows, for cuddling purposes. Where he learned he was going to be on Apartment Red and had let Dan know before anybody else. Where they’d Skyped for over five hours having one of the best conversations Phil can remember ever having in his life. Where Dan had tweeted “ _oi he’s mine_ ” and it made Phil’s heart beat so fast he’s pretty sure it dented his ribs. 

But then Phil got home from his day in Manchester about a week after that emo tweet, and opened up his laptop to see a similar barrage:

“ _i dont know what i want_ ” Dan tweeted. “ _still._ ” 

“ _why does this have to happen_ ”

“ _i am torn in half. but ive committed. i will end up with the biggest R_ ” Dan confirmed in a reply that “the biggest R” referred to “regret” and Phil’s stomach twisted. 

“ _what’s the best for my future, and let’s be realistic. well i know what that is, but then.._ ” 

“ _finale: i will lie. like always. hope for the fucking best, then itll all go wrong. or maybe it wont. but then that future? its not certain._ ” 

Just as Phil thought maybe he knew what Dan was getting at, feeling down about uni or his future as a whole, the next tweet socked him in the jaw. “ _what rly is the difference between ‘being in love’ and ‘loving someone’ how can you tell what you feel? and is just loving someone worth it?_ ”

“ _the fact of the matter is im too weak to do this myself. so if this is the only way, i will fucking eat my just desserts_ ” 

It was melodramatic shouts into the void, the whole lot of it, but fuck did Phil ache for him. 

He wishes he knew what to say or what to do to keep these spirals from Dan, and even if that was impossible he wishes he knew what to say or what to do to patch him up. 

He wishes he knew just what Dan was feeling so torn up about, because half of Phil fears it was him, and the other half fears it was something else, anything else. And how fucking selfish can someone be, Phil worries as he grabs his phone— how fucking selfish, to hope you matter to someone so much that you’re worried you might not be the reason they’re spiralling… if they have to spiral at all, right? 

Even though it’s now stupidly late at night, he sits on his bed with his back against his saturated blue wall and rings Dan.

There’s no answer until the third ring. Phil only realises then the possibility of waking Dan up by calling him, but he knows he would’ve called anyway even if he’d realised it sooner. He needed to call him. Needed to hear his voice. To do what he could. To make sure Dan was okay. 

“Hi Phil,” Dan answers in a voice so hollow that Phil’s blind panic escalates. But he tries to swallow it down and manages to keep his voice from shaking when he speaks. 

“Hey,” he says. “You alright?” 

The line is quiet. “…No.” 

“What’s wrong?” 

“Everything.” If Dan didn’t sound so lifeless then, Phil might have laughed nervously at the maudlin answer. Surely _everything_ isn’t wrong. Surely it only seems that way? 

“We could, er, tackle one thing at a time?” He’s feeling too many emotions right now, most of them muddy, but he’s hoping most of all that Dan will talk to him. That Dan will let him help him, if he can. 

“I feel… sad,” he says. “Heavy. It happens sometimes… I guess. Everything just feels like shit.” 

“You don’t know what you want?” Phil echoes his tweets. 

“I mean, I have some idea. But it isn’t what I’m supposed to want.” Dan groans like he’s sitting up. His voice is a little clearer when he goes on. “I’m barely a month into my gap year and I already feel like I’m wasting it. I see all these pics of my friends at uni and they’re so happy and I’m just… lonesome, I guess.” 

“That sounds pretty normal, Dan,” he says, hoping it’s helpful. “I’m sorry.” 

“I saw this picture of Alice on Facebook with her new roommates at some sort of fresher party, and she looked so fucking happy, Phil. I don’t think I’ve ever seen her that happy. Not in all the years we were together.” 

“Do you—”

“We’ve been broken up for like two fucking weeks and she already looks the happiest she’s ever been in her life? Could we even have been _in love_ in that case? Did we just love each other because you can love your friends and the people you spend most of your time with for years? Were we just wasting our fucking time?” 

“Dan—”

“I mean, I never even told her that I like guys! How can you be in love with someone who’s never bothered to be honest with you?” Phil hears a thud like Dan’s flopped back down onto his bed.

“Why didn’t you ever tell her?” 

“I don’t know,” Dan says. “I don’t know. I think I’ve just known her too long. I didn’t want to contradict the idea that she had of me, or something. I didn’t want to shatter that since I figured it was the idea she had fallen in love with anyways.”

“Do you miss her?” Phil feels selfish just for asking. 

“No. And I’m glad she’s happy. I just don’t get it. I don’t get why we couldn’t make each other happy.”

“Yeah,” Phil says, as filler more than anything. He feels like he isn’t actually helping at all. 

“My parents freaked when I told them we’d split up.” 

“Did they? You always made it seem like they weren’t, I dunno, invested.” 

Dan scoffs around a laugh, and Phil thinks it must be a hopeful sign. Maybe he’ll wring a proper laugh out of Dan tonight. “I mean, they aren’t. But me dating Alice was something about me they knew, and remembered. It was the most current information they had since I told them I’d been fired from Focus for selling a child an axe. We just… we don’t really share information. I don’t really share information with them.”

“Oh…” 

“Yeah. And they liked her. They liked that she had a plan, some idea of what to do with her life. I don’t have any fucking clue. I want, like, something that’ll sound smart? When I tell people what I do, they’ll be impressed. Law or something. But I also really want to do something… fun? Like YouTube.” 

“You _should_ do YouTube,” Phil says. “I’ve been saying so for ages.”

“I feel like I have to be… realistic?” 

“You could do both, something impressive for uni and have YouTube as your dirty little secret.”

“Like you did?”

“Yeah,” Phil says, smiling. “Like I did.” 

“I guess.” 

“Can I say, even if it doesn’t feel like it, you have so much time. You’re not wasting your gap year. You’re not running out. I’m four years and two degrees ahead of you, and I still don’t know what I’m doing. So, like… there’s so much time.” 

Dan’s quiet for a while. He’s so quiet that Phil thinks maybe he’s fallen asleep or hung up or worse. He thinks maybe Dan felt he was being dismissive, brushing aside things that are really bothering him like it doesn’t matter. He’s scared he’s made Dan feel even worse. Then Dan says, “Thanks, Phil.” 

“Yeah,” he says. “Of course.” 

“I still don’t feel great.” 

“You still don’t sound great.” 

“Oi! Thanks for that, Lester.” He’s laughing. It’s a peal of hollow, halting laughter. But it’s laughter. 

“I just mean you still sound—”

“Heavy…”

“Yeah.” Phil shrugs even though Dan can’t see it. “Are you tired? It’s pretty late.” He feels like they probably haven’t fixed anything; that whatever Dan said is bothering him, and everything else he didn’t say, is still eating away at him the same as before Phil called. But Phil also doesn’t know what else to do, other than to ask if Dan is tired. 

“I can’t sleep,” he says. “Been trying for ages.” 

“Do you want me to let you go?” 

“No, no. Unless you wanna go to sleep. But I’d like you to stay.” 

“Then I’ll stay.” 

Phil wishes they weren’t so far apart. He wishes he was holding Dan right now instead of holding his phone. He wishes he could help him sleep, help him feel less heavy— just help him. Help him feel as happy as Dan makes him most days. He wishes he knew how. 

Dan asks him to talk about anything, so Phil talks about his day in Manchester and about the pet rabbit he had growing up and about his favourite season of _Buffy_ and why it’s his favourite. 

He falls asleep before Dan does, and wakes up the next morning to a text reading “ _thx again phil :] really <3_” 

He smiles, thinks maybe he managed to help a bit after all, feels some of the tension in his shoulders loosening. He texts back, “ _Anytime, Danny :3 really! <3_”

*

When Dan first told his parents about going to Manchester to stay with Phil for a few days, their response was largely stilted surprise. 

This was coming on the heels of him telling him about the breakup with Alice, ergo this was a tremendous amount of information he was offering them. So part of the surprise, he figured, must’ve been rooted in the fact that he was telling them things at all. 

Breaking up with a nice girlfriend of three years, was bad enough, and now Dan was laying on them that he’d be travelling across the country to meet an older guy from the internet. 

So they took longer than they might have to react. 

Dan had taken their moment of surprise as an opportunity. He’d spilt out his verbal diarrhoea, told them when he’d be leaving and when he’d be back— _told_ them, didn’t _ask_ them, because he’s eighteen years old and he spent his own money on the tickets and this is his choice. 

Then before they had a chance to even answer, he waved goodbye and headed off to work at Asda. A well-timed exit that he was rather proud of. 

And he avoids them for the next handful of days, because he’s had years of practice doing just that. He times his exits from his bedroom and the house so that he doesn’t bump into them, he times his meals so that they’re never in the same room. 

Until he slips up, because he thought when he heard the front door closing it was his parents leaving to do the weekly grocery shopping, and instead it must’ve been Adrian who he somehow always forgets to account for when he’s trying to avoid any and all people. Maybe it’s because they do a good enough job staying out of each other’s way. 

So when he walks into the kitchen ready for a bowl of cereal, he sees his mum at the breakfast bar with a cup of coffee and his father walking in from the lounge with the morning newspaper under his arm. 

“Morning,” he says, trying to cover up that he hadn’t expected them home. 

“Ah,” his father says, smiling and setting the paper on the counter, “you’ve emerged from your cave.” 

Dan turns to grab a bowl and takes that opportunity with his back towards his father to roll his eyes. If they were so concerned that he’s always in his _cave_ they could very easily go there to find him. Nothing’s stopping them from knocking on the fucking door. 

“Listen,” his father continues, “About Manchester, we’re not sure it’s really a good idea, Dan. It’s a waste of money. It’s unsafe.” 

“Oh, it’s a waste of money to have fun now?” Dan’s not keeping the snippiness out of his voice. He’s tired and nervous and his fuse is already short today. “I’d enjoy it, so it’s automatically impractical, yeah?” 

“It’s unsafe,” his father reiterates. 

“It’s not!” Dan doesn’t mean to shout. But he’s shouting. 

“Daniel,” his mother’s voice is dripping in compromise, “this is how people get murdered, love.” 

He doesn’t hide his eye roll this time. “I’m not gonna get murdered, mum! Jesus Christ…” 

“You very well might,” his dad’s voice is rising as well, though he’s not yet shouting. 

“And that would bother you so much?” 

“Obviously, we’ve put eighteen years of hard work into you,” his mum tries to joke. She often tries to joke. Dan rarely has the patience for it, and certainly doesn’t right now when he’s seeing red. 

“You’re being dramatic,” his father says. 

“You’re being unfair,” Dan counters. “It doesn’t matter anyway. I’ve bought the tickets. They’ve been delivered. I’m going. It’s my choice.” 

“We’re allowed to raise concerns—”

“And I’m allowed to ignore them!” Dan abandons the idea of cereal; he isn’t hungry now anyways. He stomps off to his bedroom and he isn’t followed by either of them, though he hadn’t expected he would be. 

He texts Phil, “ _my parents are convinced i shouldnt meet you because youre a stranger -_-_ ”

Phil texts back less than two minutes later, “ _=D everyone’s a stranger before you meet them!_ ” 

“ _plz dont murder me_ ” 

“ _well… you did ask nicely… ^-^_ ”

As they keep texting, Dan’s anger goes from a boil to a simmer. Around twenty minutes after he stormed out of the kitchen, he hears a knock on his door. It’s such a rare occurrence that the surprise freezes him for half a second. 

“Dan,” his mum’s voice bleeds through the door, “can I come in?”

“Yeah,” he says, unsure what else he could say. 

His mum opens the door, sits beside him on his bed, looks at him with that tired look he’s seen on her face for years. 

“We weren’t saying you _can’t_ go to Manchester,” she says. “We were just saying we’re concerned.” 

“Dad doesn’t sound concerned, he sounds like he wants to boss me around.” 

“You’re father’s a hard man to love.” She shrugs. Now she’s phrased it like that, Dan thinks she’s nailed it. He’s hard all around, he’s hard on himself and hard on his children and hard to love. Dan’s not really sure how his mum’s had the patience for it all these years. “And you’re too much alike,” she continues. 

That hits Dan somewhere between his shoulders. 

He knows he’s too much like his father, knows that’s where most of their tension is rooted. Knows that sometimes they’re even alike in good ways. But hearing that he’s too much like someone his mum just described as a hard man to love makes Dan think that’s probably why things fell apart like they did with Alice. 

Like they inevitably will with Phil, he fears. 

His mum keeps talking before he can properly spiral. “Wouldn’t your friend’s parents be concerned if he was coming down here? Parents worry. It’s in the job description.” 

“What’s in my job description?” 

“You’re a teenager, Dan. Technically, still. Parents worry and teenagers worry them. Also, teenagers don’t get along with their parents. I sure as hell didn’t. Then eventually I woke up in my mid-twenties and found out my mum was the funniest person in the world.” 

“She really is…” Dan’s softening. 

“Here’s hoping you make the same discovery about me one day.” 

Dan laughs a short little laugh; he rolls his eyes. Maybe he doesn’t think his mum’s the funniest person in the world, but he’s feeling oddly generous in that moment and figures she’s probably somewhere in the top hundred. “What am I supposed to do until then?” 

She reaches her hand up, clearly on a path intent to ruffle his hair, and since he recognises it in time he bobs out of her way. It makes her laugh, and his hair is saved. “Keep hating us,” she smiles. “We’re terribly unfair.” 

She moves to hug him; he lets her. And it’s nice. He’s not really sure the last time they had a moment like this. Just a… really nice moment. 

He’s still angry— he’s kind of always angry these days, it feels like— but the sting is gone. There will be another spat with his father on the horizon, there always is. Maybe even a genuine fight next time. About uni or about how he never leaves his room or about how he hates working at Asda, whatever his father’s ready to drudge up to rile him. 

Maybe even something bigger, something worse. 

But for now, they’re fine. Things are just fine. 

He’s going to Manchester, he’s meeting Phil, there’s no question about it. And his parent’s opinion about the whole thing doesn’t really matter.


	8. Chapter 8

Phil blinks open his eyes to find that he’d fallen asleep while Skyping with Dan. He looks at the minutes on the call that is still going and sees he’d only dozed off for about an hour, so not as bad as it might have been. 

It seems sometime during his 1 am nap, Dan had drifted asleep as well. Phil sees Dan’s arms curled into him and his eyelashes fanned out over his cheeks. His laptop is near death, sitting at 11% and he’s sure Dan’s is in a similar state. 

He’s watching Dan’s pixelated shoulders rise and fall with his breaths. His laptop is angled so that he’s really only seeing Dan’s face and down to his torso. 

He wishes he could see more. He wishes he could see all of Dan. Not on a screen, in real life. He wishes he could reach out and touch him. He wants to know what Dan’s hair feels like when he runs his fingers through it. He wants to know if Dan’s skin is as soft as it looks. 

He wants to taste him— to taste his mouth and to taste his skin and to know the taste of him when he comes. 

And he realises, with a sudden wave of delight and relief, that he wants this without guilt. That the twist in his gut he’d felt months and months and months ago at the thought that the cavern between them was too wide to bridge— at the thought that being older than Dan combined with his small slice of internet clout adding up to something gross, something predatory if he admits how into Dan he is— that twist in his gut is gone. 

Faded. 

Swallowed whole by the fact that he and Dan like each other as people; they’re friends. 

They’re best friends. 

This isn’t AmazingPhil leering over his sexy fanboy danisnotonfire. This is Phil waking up to see Dan asleep on the other side of a laptop, thinking that he’s so fucking beautiful, wishing that he felt sure enough in whatever their unspoken _something_ was to tell him so, but satisfied with just looking for now. 

It’s tenderness, or something like it. 

He’s allowed to feel it. 

He watches for a few minutes more as the timer on the call ticks away. His laptop battery is at 7% when the call is dropped and Phil has to assume that Dan’s battery has died. 

He looks at his own reflection in the darkened square that had just a few seconds before held the image of a sleeping Dan. He reaches to shut his own laptop and rolls onto his back. 

Dan’s laughter from before they’d both fallen asleep is still ringing in his ears. He digs out his phone from somewhere among his pillows so he can pull up Twitter and look again at Dan saying “ _i want to be there so you dont have to be brave_ ” a few hours before when Phil had tweeted about the extra creepy noises in the house. 

He scrolls through a few other tweets Dan had sent over the last few months. Sometimes he still can’t believe them, believe they were meant for him. 

He remembers Dan’s nakedbooth from the day before. He remembers all the others. 

Phil’s hand travels down and slips into his pants. He’s thinking about Dan’s laughing eyes and his pouty lips and his dimpled smile. He’s thinking about Dan’s hairless chest and his brown nipples and about how badly he’d like to bite down the long line of Dan’s body. Down from his shoulders to his collarbones to his ribs to the jut of his hips. 

He’s thinking about what Dan would sound like. _Fuck_ , he wants to know what he could get Dan to sound like. 

After he comes and cleans up and takes his contacts out, he lays back in bed ready to fall asleep again because his body is begging him to. But he can’t right away, because his brain is still buzzing. 

He texts Dan, “ _sorry for falling asleep on you :3 You’d better record your video tomorrow like you said you would ^-^_ ”

His mind digs up a thought he’d had earlier. That the _something_ between him and Dan is unspoken. He thinks, really, that doesn’t seem quite accurate. They’re constantly flirting, they’re always drooling over each other’s pictures, they’re endlessly texting each other little hearts and they’re perfectly vocal about it all— about how fond they are of each other. 

It’s not that it’s unspoken, exactly. It’s that they aren’t saying what they specifically need to say to make sure they’re on the same page. 

They’re not saying, “I like you. Romantically. A lot. I want to kiss you. Badly. I want to know you. I want you to know me. I want to fuck you and to watch our favourite films together and to play video games together and to eat trash pizza until neither of us can move. I want to talk to you every chance I get. I want you, I want you, I want you. I want you to want me.”

And sure, maybe a reason they aren’t saying exactly that is so they don’t get the Cheap Trick song stuck in their head forever. And sure, maybe another reason is that people don’t really give monologues like that outside of rom-com airport climaxes. 

And sure, maybe the biggest reason of all is that it’s scary. 

It’s scary to feel so much for someone else and still have a hint of doubt in some cobwebby corner of your mind that they feel the same way. It’s scary when you’re young, and far apart, and queer, and unsure about pretty much everything in your life except about how much this other person means to you. 

Besides, this wait is good enough for now. This gentle pining and less-gentle flirtation. 

For now. 

Not for much longer, but yeah… for now. 

When he wakes up the next morning, Dan has texted him back. “ _=P you can fall asleep on me any time lester <3_”

“ _Noted <3_” Phil texts, “ _now record your video, Howell!!! *v*_ ” 

Dan procrastinates recording his first YouTube video until the next day, despite Phil’s prodding. Then, despite Phil’s editing tips, he procrastinates putting it together for another two days. Then, when Phil threatens to revoke his promise not to murder Dan when they finally meet, he uploads “HELLO INTERNET.” on October 16th. 

Phil thinks it’s good. He knew Dan would be good. He thinks it’s quirky and random and funny, and he thinks Dan looks really fucking good in it. 

When he tells Dan that he thinks all this, Dan blushes. The apples of his cheeks redden, and a rosy patch near his jaw grows even rosier. Phil can just make it out over Skype. He wants so badly to see it in person. He wants to kiss Dan’s blush and see if it’s any warmer than the rest of his skin. 

*

Dan can’t stop smiling. It seems Phil can’t either. 

They really can’t help it; the excitement coursing through their veins is like waiting for Christmas morning, but so powerfully concentrated it’s really more like all the Christmases they’ve ever known combined. 

It’s late enough at night, and they’ve been talking for so many hours already, that Phil’s leaning shirtless against his headboard and wearing his glasses. Dan thinks about how he’s going to have that view in person in just a few hours.

Maybe. 

Possibly. 

He’s going to be seeing Phil, that’s a given. He’s going to sit beside him, he’s going to hug him first thing when he gets off the train. But whether Phil’s going to allow the same intimacy that they’re afforded on Skype is still up in the air. 

Whether they’ll both discard shirts, whether Phil will take his contacts out, whether Dan will leave his hair unstraightened after a shower? 

That’s all dependant on whether the energy shifts at all once they’re actually in the same place. 

That’s all dependant on whether Dan’s going up north to meet his entirely platonic best friend. Or his… something else. His possible boyfriend, his possible person, his possible someone.

He’s thinking that it should be obvious. 

He’s thinking that maybe it _is_ obvious to Phil and that’s why they aren’t spelling it out. Maybe the loops in Dan’s head that tell him all the flirting means what he thinks it means are _right_ , and the loops in his head that immediately follow telling him that the flirting means nothing at all are _wrong_. And maybe it’s the other way around. 

Maybe he won’t know until tomorrow.

And maybe this was stupid. Maybe nothing is going to change at all. Or maybe everything will change. 

Maybe Phil will see him on the train platform and say, “Wow, I could love you. I could fall _in love_ with you.” Or maybe Phil will hate him in person. Maybe Phil is going to fall in love with a random stranger on the bus ride into town… shit, now Dan pictures how he’d have to fall asleep later that night on the Lester’s sofa whilst Phil and Mystery Bus Stranger consummate their mythical love upstairs on the green and blue duvet Dan knows so well. 

Or maybe nothing like that is going to happen and Dan just needs to get the fuck out of his own head. 

“Hey,” Phil says, lifting a hand and tapping against his webcam. “You’re thinking so loud I can hear you from here!” He makes a screeching inhale, a general animal squawk that digs Dan up from his unhelpful thoughts and leaves them both laughing. 

“Sorry,” he says. But Phil smiles and says he doesn’t need to be sorry and Dan mirrors his smile because he really can’t help it. 

“You tired?” Phil asks. 

Dan shakes his head. “No, definitely not.” He glances down at the call length. “We’ve only been going for two hours, Phil… that’s nowhere near our record!” 

They both have a laugh because they know that tonight is not a night for challenging their record. They aren’t going to stay up nearly as late as they normally would, talking on Skype and flirting shamelessly hoping that the other will recognise it, and letting the hours slip past until they’re both exhausted but unwilling to say goodnight. They can’t do that this time.

Because Dan needs to actually get some sleep tonight— he has to be up early in the morning, he has a train to Manchester to catch. Phil’s gonna meet him at the station. It’s real. It’s really, finally, happening. 

Dan lets that idea settle in his skin. 

It’s really happening. 

He’s going to meet Phil Lester tomorrow and just a few months ago that would’ve seemed impossible. Would’ve been some weird drunken dream he’d had, surely. Would’ve seemed laughable. Until, that is, he did something brave and stupid and mad. 

A whole series of brave and stupid and mad things, really. 

Pestering Phil until he was noticed. Ending things with Alice when he finally admitted to himself that they’d surpassed their expiration date. Accepting Phil’s invitation north. Posting endless tweets and DailyBooths and nakedbooths and a freaking YouTube video with plans for more to come, anything he could think of really that allowed him to simultaneously interact with Phil and also to become who he wanted to be online. 

And now, he decides while sat up on his bed with his back against his brown wall and his laptop warming his legs, he promises to himself that he’ll do the bravest and stupidest and maddest thing he can imagine. Before he never gets the chance again. 

He’s going to kiss Phil. At some point, if he can pluck up the courage while he’s up north, he will. 

He’ll kiss him and he’ll say what he needs to say and he’ll hope that he hasn’t been misreading months of interaction. 

He’s scared about what wanting to kiss another boy means. And being scared surprises and frustrates him, because it’s not like this is new fucking information. There’s just something about the fact that he’s now facing an actual possibility however that’s different than daydreaming about young Leo in _Titanic_. 

Kind of a _no-turning-back-now_ signpost between who he thinks he might be and who he’s actually going to allow himself to be. 

And that’s scarier, somehow, than the possibility that his feelings might not be reciprocated. 

Phil makes another screeching animal sound. “You’re distracted again, Danny,” he says. He’s smiling while he says it; he’s not angry or annoyed or upset. He looks relaxed and kind and so fucking good. Dan smiles too. 

“My brain won’t shut up,” he shrugs. He slides down from sitting against the wall until he’s lying on his side with his laptop on the pillow next to him. Phil slides down as well, on his own bed that’s so far away. It almost feels like they’re lying next to each other. Almost. But they’ll know the real thing soon. 

They talk about their plans for tomorrow, what parts of Manchester Phil’s going to show off before taking Dan back to his parentless house. Phil hides some locations behind a smirk, saying he can’t tell Dan the best bits yet. He wants them to be a surprise. They talk about the video they plan to do together and about the films and video games they’re gonna dive into. 

They talk about “next time” and “when it snows” and “in the summer” like the idea that there will be more trips is certain. 

They talk about Phil coming down to London for the Halloween gathering, and about future possible trips where he’ll come down south just to visit Dan. 

And they flirt a little around their nerves and excitement. They continue mirroring each other’s smiles. When Dan says goodnight, Phil says, “See you later,” and knowing that he really will has both of them grinning as they wave to their webcams.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading— come say hi on [tumblr](http://yikesola.tumblr.com/post/182916224859/the-odd-uneven-time) !  
> Infinite shoutout to [Keelin](http://ahappydnp.tumblr.com) for her enthusiasm, cyberbullying, peer pressure, and incentive, all of which were wonderfully helpful towards this fic's conception & completion <3


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